Abstract [en]

Jula AB is a family-owned business, founded by Lars-Göran and Irene Blank in 1979. Julas's concept is based on offering creative Do It Yourself (DIY'ers) and professionals attractive collections with affordable prices. This is achieved by the large volumes of finished products purchased directly without any intermediaries from the suppliers. Since Jula does not manufacture its goods, efficient logistics is essential. The importance of this factor is based on the fact that a large part of the total product value consists of transpor-tation.

Jula AB mandated two students from University West to develop alternative proposals for a new transportation arrangement. This is aimed to reduce the company's transporta-tion costs. The degree of filling of the carrier's capacity varies today. The cost of the transport depends on the transported volume; the smaller shipments the higher the trans-portation costs. One option to increase the degree of filling is to coordinate the small shipments and thus reduce the cost of the transportation; this can be accomplished by identifying and locating terminals.

The authors obtained the necessary data from the theoretical materials dealing with the elements of transport planning and a preformed benchmarking at Volvo PV in Skövde. Interviews with employees at Jula, Arcese and University West were also used. The pro-ject was limited to only examine the country with the largest volume and the highest number of shipments; this was done in order to enable the work of the thesis. This resulted in Italy as the relevant country for localization. By using the center of gravity method, the optimal location for establishment of a terminal was determined. This resulted in identi-fying the optimal location to coordinate shipments in the city of Verona, Italy. The pro-posal was presented to the transport companies Collicare and Arcese, the companies ap-peared to each own a terminal in Verona. And thus, two alternatives were able to be es-tablished whereby cost analysis for each one was estimated. This was done to enable a comparison between the proposed transportation arrangements with the one currently uti-lized.